Several migrant workers were arrested yesterday, and it was filmed by a reality TV show. Aaron McArthur has the details.

OTTAWA — The federal government is hoping to “educate” Canadians about the efforts of its border guard agents by taking part in a B.C.-based reality TV program, the Canada Border Services Agency said Friday.

The CBSA was responding to critics who say the show, which films agents arresting drug smugglers and “phoney immigrants,” is a taxpayer-funded attempt to promote the Conservatives’ law-and-order agenda.

Opposition MPs and a B.C. criminologist also said Border Security: Canada’s Front Line violates the privacy and dignity of individuals being filmed.

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, meanwhile, is planning to question the CBSA about how it’s handling privacy issues during filming of the series.

“This production educates Canadians about the important work that CBSA officers undertake 24/7 across Canada,” agency spokeswoman Jill St. John said in an email Friday evening.

She said no one appears on television without signing a consent form, and stressed that federal privacy laws are being respected.

“People are presumed innocent until they’ve gone through due process. Having your face blasted on a reality TV show and having to sign a waiver, often under pressure, is I think a loss of a person’s rights and dignity and respect.”

Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia was also unimpressed.

“My sense is that Canadians are not amused that the Crown is being used to generate sensationalist TV,” he told The Sun.

“The government is using its employees and more indirectly the broadcasters to promote its so-called accomplishments, and I don’t think Canadians appreciate that.”

Vancouver-based Force Four Entertainment announced last August it was co-operating with the CBSA on a reality show modelled after a similar Australian production. It first approached the agency in April of 2011, according to St. John.

The show, which premiered in September, was produced for Shaw Media’s National Geographic channel.

But Border Security has been largely under the public radar until media coverage in B.C. of a raid on a Vancouver construction site Wednesday. CBSA agents were searching for a foreign national with a criminal past but ended up discovering and arresting undocumented migrant workers.

CBSA confirmed that a Border Security film crew attended and filmed the bust.

On Thursday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office, responding to an interview request, said in a written statement that the government is “cracking down on fraud.”

The statement didn’t make any reference to the CBSA’s role in the TV production.

On Friday, Public Security Minister Vic Toews, who is responsible for the CBSA, also refused an interview request and ignored specific questions about the matter. Instead, spokeswoman Julie Carmichael listed the government’s measures to fight immigration fraud and smuggling, adding the “NDP opposed all of these measures.”

Carmichael, asked to respond to specific questions regarding matters such as ancillary costs to taxpayers due to CBSA’s involvement with Border Security, replied: “My response to you stands.”

Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd said Friday that no one is questioning whether the government should be going after undocumented migrant workers.

“What’s offensive about this approach is that it attempts to make entertainment out of the embarrassment and misery of these individuals.”

Scott Hutchinson, a spokesman for the privacy commissioner, said Stoddart has so far received no complaints about the CBSA’s role in the reality show. But he said the office will speak to the agency to make sure it is acting within federal privacy legislation.

“We’re certainly curious about this,” Hutchinson said.

Force Four publicist Andrew Poon, responding to the criticism Friday, re-released a statement issued by the company Thursday stressing that no one appears on the program without their written consent, and “even then, names are not revealed.”

All Canadian privacy laws are followed, according to the statement.

The CBSA’s St. John added in her statement that no money has changed hands between the CBSA and the broadcaster.

Both MPs questioned whether an illegal migrant would be in a position to refuse when they in the midst of a bust and a consent form is handed to them.

Force Four Entertainment, in its 2012 news release, used language similar to the tough-on-crime rhetoric employed by Kenney and Toews.

Border Security, the release said, has obtained from the government “exclusive access from behind the scenes” to film CBSA agents who target everyone from “citizens with undeclared food to international drug smugglers, from confused visitors to phoney immigrants.”

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